Untergrund
Video installation · 2010
Documentation · 1:50 min. · PACT Zollverein | Essen | DE · 2011
(silent)
Three channel video with hovering Forex PVC foam sheets (100 x 100 cm) · B&W · Silent ·
7:05 min.
The video projection of the installation Untergrund is perceptible only fragmentarily. Our view is obstructed by 18 square PVC foam sheets that are suspended from the ceiling by nylon threads and hover just over the floor. Like icebergs drifting in the ocean, they rotate with and against each other with every draught of air caused by the visitors in the room, thus constantly opening and closing spaces between them. It is through these temporary and ever changing openings that projectors, installed underneath the suspended sheets, project moving images onto the walls and the ceiling. Birds fly past, their black silhouettes standing out sharply against a diffuse, grey sky. Later the scene is reversed: white birds flit across a black sky like sparks flashing in a darkened room. Gradually, out of the darkness, searchlights wander aimlessly over the walls, their beams revealing details of an inside space but never showing it in its entirety. Thus the installation itself no longer serves as the projection surface on which the images appear. Indeed, it holds them back and makes visible only what can find its way out of the depths of obscurity.
(Katharina Charpey)